Obama’s HUD department rules that ‘Gender Identity’ determines ‘Sex’

September 21, 2016

The Department of Housing and Urban Development joined other Obama agencies Tuesday in ruling that ‘Gender Identity’ determines reproductive biology and overrides Title IX sex-based protections for women and girls in homeless shelters. The department defines Gender Identity as “the gender with which a person identifies, regardless of the sex assigned to that person at birth and regardless of the person’s perceived gender identity.” [p70]

The ruling allows any male to access female sleeping quarters, showers, and restrooms on the basis of self-declared ‘Gender Identity’. Questioning such a declaration on any basis is ruled as discriminatory and women’s rational need for privacy and safety from male violence is dismissed as “unsubstantiated fears” [p52].

“HUD also revises paragraph (b) to add a provision that the policies and procedures must ensure that individuals are not subjected to intrusive questioning or asked to provide anatomical information or documentary, physical, or medical evidence of the individual’s gender identity.”[p13]

HUD disregards with a handwave the rationale for protection of female privacy and safety against male violence behind the Congress’s Title IX provision for sex-segregation in areas of public nudity:

“Contrary to the public comment that suggests what Congress’s intent was in creating single-sex facilities, HUD does not opine on Congress’s intent behind permitting single-sex facilities, but does make clear in this rule that, for purposes of determining placement in a single-sex facility, placement should be made consistent with an individual’s gender identity. This rule does not attempt to interpret or define sex.” [p30]

Yet the HUD ruling does re-define legal sex -as a characteristic on par with sex-stereotypes of “appearance, behavior, expression”- falling under the newly invented federal category of “Perceived Gender Identity”:

“Perceived gender identity means the gender with which a person is perceived to identify based on that person’s appearance, behavior, expression, other gender related characteristics, or sex assigned to the individual at birth or identified in documents.” [p70]

The ruling itself re-defines ‘sex’ as a component of ‘Perceived Gender Identity’ but the agency also defines ‘Gender Identity’ as a “component of sex’ in its response to public comment:

“In response to the comment with regard to this rule’s impact on a “legal sex category,” this rule does not provide a definition of “woman” or “sex.” In this rule, HUD notes that gender identity—and whether a person identifies with their sex assigned at birth or not—is a component of sex.” [p45]

HUD cites the Title IX re-interpretation of other Obama appointed agencies (which call for the elimination of sex as a protected category) as precedent for Tuesday’s ruling, making no mention of the current legal challenges to this very interpretation by 23 states and various private litigants:

“Consistent with the approach taken by other Federal agencies, HUD has determined that the most appropriate way for shelter staff to determine an individual’s gender identity for purposes of a placement decision is to rely on the individual’s self-identification of gender identity.” [p39]

HUD cites various internet surveys as evidence that males with ‘Gender Identities’ are at greater risk of harassment and violence than women and girls. Therefore HUD rules that women and girls must be forced by the state to sacrifice their own safety and absorb the risk from males who prefer sleeping and bathing among women. HUD addresses the safety concerns of individuals with ‘Gender Identities’ extensively, including those who ‘identify as’ having no reproductive biology at all:

“In circumstances where an individual does not identify as male or female and such information is relevant to placement and accommodation, the individual should be asked the gender with which the individual most closely identifies. In these circumstances, the individual is in the best position to specify the more appropriate gender-based placement as well as the placement that is most likely to be the safest for the individual—either placement with males or placement with females.” [p48]

Yet HUD completely disregards voluminous FBI, CDC, and other forensic documentation of epidemic sex-based violence against women committed by males as “beyond the scope” of the ruling, wrapping up their dismissal with a version of the classic ‘but women rape too!’:

“HUD’s rule requires that individuals be accommodated in accordance with their gender identity. It is beyond the scope of this rule to detail methods for best serving victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking. However, as discussed earlier, this final rule requires that providers must take nondiscriminatory steps that may be necessary and appropriate to address privacy concerns raised by all residents or occupants. HUD notes that both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence and other VAWA crimes include persons who are transgender or gender nonconforming individuals and persons who are not”. [p58]

HUD fully expects violence, (which it calls “physical harassment”) to occur between homeless women and the males placed in female sleeping and bathing areas as a result of this ruling:

“If some occupants initially present concerns about transgender or gender nonconforming occupants to project staff and managers, staff should treat those concerns as opportunities to educate and refocus the occupants. HUD recognizes that, even then, conflicts may persist and complaints may escalate to verbal or physical harassment. In these situations, providers should have policies and procedures in place to support residents and staff in addressing and resolving conflicts that escalate to harassment.”[p17]

Strangely, although statistics show that female stranger violence against males is an infinitesimal probability compared to the reverse, the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development is, yet again, solely concerned with the former- the issue of women’s protection from male violence being “beyond the scope” of the Obama administration’s mandate to eliminate sex-based protections for women.

All I can think to say about this is that this is a government rule which is at variance with reality. They are right to expect violence. It is rather sad that this prospect does not deter them.

Suppose that some federal governmental body issued a ruling that we must all behave as though gravity were not real. Or that the CDC decided to rule against the germ theory of disease, so that we need not wash our hands or surgical instruments any more. (Or, knowing the government, that we MUST not do so.) What would happen?

Reality is not available to be changed by governmental edict. Gravity would continue to pull us towards the center of the earth, and germs would continue to cause diseases. The behavior mandated by the government in defiance of reality would cause a lot of falls and disease until someone woke up.

So also here. Maleness and femaleness are biological facts. These facts cannot be changed by our opinions, nor by the government. A certain number, probably a majority, of males who believe or affect to believe or say they believe that they are “really” women will behave themselves well in women’s spaces, and not cause trouble. I’m not worried about these people.

However, human beings being who we are, a certain (hopefully smaller) number of these males will demonstrate that they only make these representations in order to gain access to vulnerable women, or, that the representation made originally in good faith was not strong enough to trump biology. Sadly, women will be assaulted and worse. Like the fall victims and the sick people in my example, we will be the casualties of this crazy policy.

The good news is that hopefully, everyone, even the government, will take a look, wake up, and go back to recognizing that gravity, germs and gender cannot be wished away. That we must live with the facts of biology, physics and so forth.

We are not gods or goddesses. We are required whether we wish it or no to live in a world which cannot be changed by fantasy.

I have not had chance to read this entire post or all the background and really only skimmed the comment by drycamp and could not agree more. However these people are NOT insane as they appear to be. They are in fact insidiously, deviously and maliciously evil, ben on the deconstruction and eventual DEstruction of the America we grew up in.

Just look at are economy…in shambles. Immigration is a joker.
Our public schools…a disaster. It is truly ashame that the political Left and the Democratic Party has been hijacked by sociopathic socialists.

It is truly amazing that I find more to my way of thinking in The Federalist than my usual Left Wing haunts.

I agree. They know exactly what they’re doing: implementing the largest-scale social engineering program in history. An appalling, filthy stew of Tavistock Institute psychiatry, “1984” and “Brave New World.”

That last quoted paragraph. They are saying that the dood raping a female resident ISN’T violence or harassment. But a woman defending herself from a trans IS. And the woman needs further 1984 style reprogramming. I honestly can’t interpret that any other way. Or do I need to let it sit until I see the light?

it is inevitably the case that there will be some kind of horrifying outcome that will cause a back-pedalling on this. There always has to be some hideous price to be paid by women and girls in exchange for their being taken into consideration (we could call these units “Gerri Santoros”: x number of GS units must be paid for legislation, protection, consideration… and it’s like an ongoing rent, never an outright purchase).

Idiots. All of these people, including Obama, should go back to law school. It seems as if James Pritzker is having an undue influence on the administration.

There is NO way the administration is going to win in the courts. They seriously overreached, but this isn’t the first time Obama has done this. He has also done this education policy, overriding Congress and the rights of the states. His illegal mandates are the biggest reason I did not vote for him for re-election in 2012.

“Gender identity” is a bullshit term and always was to justify a sexual fetish, at least among the males. The term “gender” needs to be thrown into the garbage can where it belongs.

Yes, Obama needs $1,000,000,000 — that’s billion with a B — minimum to build his presidential “library” in Chicago. I’m sure the billionaire Pritzkers will be crucial to the fundraising. Obama’s “legacy” is all he cares about now.

Yes, I would like to know that too. I know she is pro trans rights, but to take it so far as to override sex based Title IX protections for women and girls? That I’m not sure of.
At this time trans rights is a politically radioactive issue which is dangerous for a candidate to go against. Even Trump has stated that he thinks trans should be allowed to use any bathroom they want. I can see Trump and Hillary not wanting to be politically hurt by the trans lobby. But what about Obama? He’s already had his two terms. What’s in it for him? I don’t know, just speculating, but is it possible that the trans lobby threats to our president and presidential candidates have gone beyond mere political damage, to assassination? Just wondering aloud.

I swear, it’s things like this that make me wish we women had our own party again and didn’t have to rely on the Democrap party! Yes, the GOP is fucking awful too, but these guys are no better. What with their corporatism and now they’re throwing women under the bus! It’s not enough to be pro-choice in terms of abortion rights anymore. You have to take our safety into consideration before passing unsubstantiated laws like this!

Obama’s never been a friend of women, and Bill Clinton’s a full-on monster. I think of him as a predatory violent male and nothing more. The Democrats abandoned women since the Reagan years with their incessant triangulation, their Third-Way Democrat sh1t.

Like the rest of you, I’m appalled and angered by the transgender male-led laws and rules and regulations that put females and children at risk. And I won’t bow down to calls to “be nice” and worship at the altar of men’s feelz. Finally, I certainly won’t abide by the snarky platitudes concerning my alleged “duty” to vote for Presidential parties or candidates I don’t believe in, and who in fact actively HARM females and children.

It occurred to me the other day: faux-moral platitudes and slogans, e.g. “If you don’t vote you can’t complain” and the like, are just another means of silencing women. Same is it ever was.

This is top-level shit coming from the most powerful people in the world.(and I’m not talking about Obama)

Transgender rhetoric serves many purposes for their aims. There is the obvious financial gains to be had from the pharmaceutical industry, but it also provides a powerful distraction, siphoning the public focus away from the new world order (aka agenda 21, sustainable development, new urbanism, smart growth… and believe me, i know how crackpot it sounds, but at the risk of going OT, check out Rosa Koire’s videos on youtube if you wish to learn more) and lastly, it employs Orwellian techniques to manipulate and control the masses and remove the language people would otherwise use to describe what is happening to their rights and freedoms. It removes objective reality and puts us all on shaky ground. And it has been adopted full force by an increasingly oppressive left with harsh repercussions for those who disagree. Not that the right is any better, obviously. Of course it also serves their personal predilections as well, and these people are very, very, sick. Women are not represented at this level at all.

This is going to cause so many lawsuits. For no real reason. It could have been hud policy to have special housing to protect trans people. But nope! No one has explained how this protects biologically female trans people, because it actually puts them at risk. The only people who gain are males. The stupidity of it all…

They could have a requirement that a shelter provide something else for an M2T resident if he’s uncomfortable sleeping on a cot in a room full of other men. Hell, even put him up in a motel or have him sleep in an administrative office for the night. It would be a bit of a burden, but surely a lesser one than what homeless women have to now bear. Really goes to show that trans is the new male supremacy. Women are not allowed to say no to men.

Laura Lindstrand of the Washington State Human Rights Commission on how women can determine if the creepy dude in the locker room has a psychological “Gender Identity”:

“You can tell if someone is lying or if they’re there for reasons they shouldn’t be. Are they dressed like a woman? Are they making any attempt to look like a woman? What are their mannerisms like? Are they speaking low or high? If none of those things are present, or if the person seems sneaky or belligerent, [you] can take action.”

When in doubt, women should wait for the man to commit a crime against them: “Voyeurism, stalking, inappropriate touching, sexual assault — those are all addressed under the criminal code. As soon as that person starts to display inappropriate behavior, that can be dealt with immediately. If they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing, they need to be made to leave, no matter who they are.”

I haven’t been able to get this post you did in March out of my mind. It seems like nothing more than a how-to manual for the pervs to sneak by long enough to commit whatever crime they might intend to do. Combine this with today’s ruling….whoa.

This makes me so angry and nauseated! I’ve always felt so thankful for the struggles of my foremothers who fought for things like Title IX and equal rights, since that meant I never had to know things like sex-segregated help wanted ads, being pressured to drop out of college so a man could take my spot, substandard or nonexistent girls’ sports teams in schools, women’s names “needing” a male escort (e.g., Mrs. Husband’s Full Name or “the daughter of Man’s Name”), needing a husband or father’s permission to buy a car or have a checking account, etc. Now these MTTs are taking away all those things that were fought so hard for not all that long ago, and making things even worse than they were in the 1950s. At least women in that decade had their own bathrooms and locker rooms, safe from swinging dicks and male predators.

I’m also angry at how many obedient handmaidens I know, who constantly prattle on about what good little Kool-Aid drinkers (I mean, open-minded transactivists) they are, and proclaim how much they welcome men in our bathrooms, locker rooms, and prisons. As recently as five years ago, I didn’t know anyone who supported this, to say nothing of other Trans, Inc. nonsense like asking for “preferred pronouns” on a sign-up sheet for a non-trans-themed event.

I don’t think most women have thought about it. Most are working on the ‘I DON’T HATE THE GAYS’ mentality. A hetero woman and I were laughing about a male using our restroom. I had only seen him exiting the room. “I can’t believe anyone cares about it” she said.
“What possible reason does he have for using a female restroom?” I asked. “Because of his feelings…” she replied. “Well everyone has feelings,” I replied. “I have lots of feelings. Feelings are a personal matter.”

“OH MY GODDD” she said, “I was so freaked out! I was in the stall and I heard someone flip the seat up and pee like a man. Then they flipped the seat down. I was afraid to leave the stall but when I finally did it was him preening at the mirror!”

LOL.

Women hate this trans shit. The same ones stating “I can’t believe anyone cares” about these dudes in women’s spaces and “Trans women are women!” ARE MORTIFIED by them.

A few months ago I mentioned the trans issue to a woman who is VERY sensitive to every social justice issue, every demographic group except her own (white,female, straight, educated). I thought she’d bite my head off. Instead, her face got taut and grey, and she told me she had such a hatred for men claiming to be women she thought she could kill one of them! Then, in the next breath, she told me she was working to overcome that hatred because she believed their brains had been washed in estrogen in the womb and they really are women. I told her no such thing and please, embrace the anger, this is war, and you don’t want to be on the wrong side. No, she said, women will never lose the progress we have made and it is time to have bathrooms that are open to all. She was utterly smug in her new social cause. She will not read a goddamn thing that contradicts the trans religion. I read shit like this HUD article above and I think “So many believe. I don’t believe. I don’t want to live in some Orwellian freak zone. But here I am–cursed to live in interesting times.” Now I am at the point I know I have to act on conscience, regardless of safety, privacy, or peace. I never thought of myself as an activist but I know I must do something. I just haven’t figured out what, or how to be effective yet. This is war.

That sounds too close to reprogramming people’s thoughts to me. Odd they worded it that way. 1984 and the Ministry of Truth
Will shelter staff be given training to educate others or is it a HUD given that shelter staff know, agree and are assumed to be onboard with HUD guidelines ?

“If some occupants initially present concerns about transgender or gender nonconforming occupants to project staff and managers, staff should treat those concerns as opportunities to educate and refocus the occupants.”

You don’t have to #askhillary, unfortunately. If you go to http://www.hrc.org/resources/obama-administration-policy-legislative-and-other-advancements-on-behalf-of you can see her stances on the Obama administration’s “progress” for LGBT. There are little asterisks after each one for “Indicates a post-2009 policy recommendation involving substantial work by HRC and our movement peers with the administration” or “Indicates a policy recommendation included in HRC’s 2009 “Blueprint for Positive Change.” The absolute worst ones, including this HUD policy and the public school directive forcing teenage girls to shower and undress with boys in locker rooms, fall under the “post-2009 substantial work” category. So she’s swallowed the trans Kool-Aid full-on, as she was no doubt directed to do long ago by whoever it is actually making policy in the Obama administration.

Does Pritzker really have this much power over this administration? Or are there other forces at play?

Since I am a very long term Obama fan (way back), I am going to offer that he is clueless about this. I honestly trust it is not him, he has bigger fish to fry, like wars and world peace and stuff, and I trust his judgement. But he hired some losers.

Obama’s DoE is threatening LOW INCOME and SPECIAL ED student funding if schools don’t tow trans lines (that is the funding at risk, its not for friggin football), and HUD, which is a perennial basket case, can’t think of better ways to use public funds but to use legal resources for the emotional needs of men and women who have pathological problems with their gonads? The DoJ is headed by Loretta Lynch, who laid a huge goose egg when trying to untangle cops versus BLM.

We have trans trolls that lie on every website and on TV about the redefinition of Title IX, saying kids need to be in some sort of treatment. They not only do NOT need treatment, schools cant ask for treatment plans, and parents should not be informed because they may be “transphobic”, or else, see that autistic kid? We will fuck with him and his family and his entire future. See that poor black kid? Take his Head Start. I truly believe Obama is clueless about the shit around this and so are most women who – once they get explained that these men are legally demanding the definition of women no questions asked, are appalled.

So now I will respectfully ask…as this shit has been funded, trotted out and dragged through the media by the LGBT community, and I know you are not all monolithic and I am grateful for the light these sites offer right now, but how did Lesbians who seem so empowered, get so fucked over by the very organizations that are supposed to represent them?

I get misogyny and all that, but I really want to understand, what the fuck happened? Was it a slow fuckery like a long term grooming? A sudden overwhelming barrage of trans activist assholes? An ass load of money paying off gay guys at LGBT organizations who hate transwomen and are only too happy to offload them to real women? Women who didn’t know any better and wanted to kiss their booboos and make them feel better? Women who deep inside had empathy for what they are going through? Because I truly want to know what to avoid as we go forward, and we need to do something.

This makes me wonder whether women can privately form their own housing co-operatives at all like in decades past. It appears that the private sector, our own homes, are the last vestige of women’s space.

Embarassment……profound embarassment here. For many reasons, not the least of which is this level of ignorance on the part of Obama and others reflects in ways that confirms the worst stereotypes. Need I mention what those are?

Do you mean James Pritzker wouldn’t socialize with/give money to a Democratic politician? Penny Pritzker is Obama’s Secretary of Commerce, and James and Penny are cousins, so he and Obama must know one another. Because otherwise, does the fact that Pritzker is a Republican matter? Obama has had a number of Republicans/conservatives either offered positions of power in his administration, like John Sunnunu was, or actually occupying those positions, like Robert Gates and Chuck Hagel.

I mean, I’m not suggesting that James Pritzker is the shadowy figure behind all of this, but I’m genuinely puzzled as to why Obama and his policy wonks are absolutely determined to gut women’s civil rights at the most basic level unless someone with significant money and pull has their ear. Obama’s got a wife and two daughters. Does he despise them? I just wonder if anyone has any insight specifically into the administration’s rationale in shoving trans down our throats, and I’m not really buying “misguided altruism” as an excuse. There’s something oddly personal in the fervor behind it—I mean, really, the movement itself is pushing them to strip away women’s civil rights at the agency level? And they’re complying like that? The movement is that powerful without some sort of insider pushing the administration? Or Obama is that misogynist? I see Black Lives Matter protests on the news cycle 24/7, but that doesn’t seem to be inspiring Obama or his Justice Department to do anything structural to help black people in America, and blacks are a huge and important voting block for Democrats, so why the hell are a miniscule group of people able to force through these huge changes that strip women of their most basic civil rights? I don’t see special rules or huge interventions being made for black people, who actually are being killed and whose movement actually does have the raw numbers that could turn an election. The things BLM wants are mostly common sense/basic justice, like better restrictions on/training for cops and real trials for trigger-happy officers, but they aren’t getting them. So why are trans people so special that no laws or forms of due process apply to them all of a sudden? It’s not like they sprouted out of the ground overnight; Janice Raymond was warning everyone back in the Seventies.

The backlash has now gone on longer than active, organized Second Wave feminism did. By the early Eighties academic departments all over the country were full pomo. Why is the Obama administration part of it? (I’d like to believe in his benevolence and ignorance, but I don’t. Obama is a constitutional lawyer and an incredibly smart, well-informed man. He knows what he’s aiding and abetting here. He was at the U.N. this week cheerleading for the glories of globalization and capitalism, both of which are, in the main, horrible for women. It’s men who profit by capitalism. As of 2012 women were still 60% of the world’s hungry according to the U.N.)

I mean, I went and dutifully voted for Obama twice like a good little girl, and I’ll go dutifully vote for Hillary like a good little girl, but really, what for? She’ll get in, she’ll appoint trans-friendly justices to the SC, and that’ll be it for Title IX. And for women. We’ll be re-litigating for decades just to gain back the ground we once had, which seems very simple: Biological sex exists; therefore women exist. It’s so Orwellian it’s jaw-dropping.

I’m sorry to ramble; I just feel so awful for the women this is going to hurt right now. We’re all going to be hurt long-term, but these are some of the most vulnerable and powerless women in our society, which makes them some of the most powerless people on earth, and I feel so terrible for what they’re going to face. Need a shelter overnight? Sure, but if you don’t keep your mouth shut about that 200-pound dude in a wig in the cot next to you, you’ll have to participate in our re-education camp, in which you’ll have to agree that you don’t exist and that men are benevolent masters. Right this way, ladies. And that’s if everything goes according to plan. If not, more rape and assault and intimidation for women who have likely been assaulted and raped and intimidated many, many times in their lives. Where’s Obama’s hope-and-change meme now?

I guess I just need to get my head around why it’s happening and with such unabated force before I can even begin to figure out how the hell we’re supposed to fight them this time. How are we going to figure out how to put an end to this b.s. under a Clinton administration (if she wins) if we can’t figure out who or what is driving Obama? That’s what terrifies me.

hissingofsummerlawns Yours truly is upset over the lethargy which Obama’s administration has shown towards blacks and women, just as you are. The fact he and others have gone to bat for those…many of whom see blacks as being being useful as pay for the night concubines or poorly minded and dressed entertainers…and see women as those to steal rights and safety from is beyond me. Having seen or overheard BOTH from the last sentence in living color…this is upsetting. But many mainlining the Kool-aid will deny it.

As for fighting this BS..one needs to hit the creeps (not all are, but those who are identifiable) where it hurts. If it means class action suits….fine. If it means asking parents of all stripes to boycott schools that bend to the agenda and establish newer schools, that operate like schools on let’s say…Asia or the EU…do it. Enlist those in media, etc who will have the stones to be honest…and ask what needs to be asked, with evidence in hand.

Women need to present a united front against this crap and do things like issue statements that do not respect the “authority” of the Obama government to decide the type of things they’re deciding for and about women and to issue statements of our own position on this matter, putting forth our OWN authority (whether or not we can actually enforce our will.) We need to stop RESPECTING the opposition in all its forms, including the form of the government.

I suggest to all schools and places of learning: immediately put 1984, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, Politics and the English language and Animal Farm on the mandatory reading lists everywhere and right now! It’s getting real out here… and very, very scary. The O admin knows how easily he can get away with all of this because 1. He is almost done in office and can push through 11th hour headspinning BS like this and 2. People are very uneducated today and therefore very easily manipulated. I can’t believe what’s come to pass. It is truly frightening. Obama is making me sick- he has really screwed women everywhere.

These books ARE required reading in many places. Unfortunately the curriculum is usually focused around base-level reading comprehension instead of understanding the purpose of the damn book and what the author was trying to say about human nature and the world we live in.

Which is pretty sad because it’s not like these authors are exactly shy about their themes. What we need critical thinking classes STAT, particularly a crash course on identifying and deconstructing logical fallacies. Instead, our young people are learning that the best way to construct an argument is to cry the hardest and scream the loudest.

Hopefully there will be a big backlash against this, at least on the ground level. Considering how many homeless women (and men to a lesser extent) have a history of abusive spouses, the potential for male re-entry in their own accommodations, access to their own resources, would set a very unpropitious precedent.

You’re absolutely right. So many women seem totally unaware of the fact that men make the meanings that suit them, and those meanings then become reality for everyone, but those meanings are not written in stone—they just come from men’s brains, which is why they need god, art, politics, etc., to buoy them up and cement their authority, because the emperor has no clothes. Women spend so much of our lives being undermined and scrabbling just to keep alive that we never have time to undo the brainwashing we endure and realize we, too, can make meaning; we don’t have to work in the context we’ve been forced into. Women are encouraged from the moment of birth to be in awe of men, to believe they have some deep intellectual powers we’ve been denied, and it’s awful. They undermine us at the level of our brains and skins to keep us afraid and divided. And when I see these third-wavers talking about trans and porn and prostitution and choicey-choices, it just kills me. So much awe and respect for people who absolutely hate them.

This blog, and all the other brilliant radfem blogs I see cropping up all the time, are a step towards your solution, but I guess the question is, how do radical feminist women connect to women as a whole? If more women were hearing radfem voices, do you think women would finally come together again? Does anyone who reads this blog think that, or if they don’t think so, why?

@ What Ever

It makes me sick and scared, too. The even scarier thing is, so many places of learning have produced (and are producing) the precise conditions needed for rulings like this. The stuff going on in colleges—“micro-aggressions,” professors afraid to have class discussions because their students might get offended and take action to get them fired, comedians refusing to play campuses because the kids are so humorless, etc—it all produces the idea that individual feelings are the very most real and important things in the universe and that other people are obligated to respect them at all times, which in turn creates the absurdity of social justice movements based on feelings rather than shared goals. Men reaped what they sowed by inviting post-modernism into the academy and making it the dominant mode of thought, and we now live in the perfect pomo nightmare, where women as a diverse but biologically-unified class of people no longer exist culturally or politically, but men’s feelings have to be respected as though they have the same objective existence and value as a human female life. Which is always how men’s feelings have been treated, really, but this is the first time they’ve actually been able to dispatch us as a whole class of people this efficiently, and in a way that appears so humane and non-violent. (Obama administration: “Don’t you want the nice oppressed autogynephiles to have their civil rights? In fact, to have your civil rights? What sort of monster are you?”)

And this appears to be the first time huge swaths of women are cooperating like this. I mean, there are handmaidens in any era, but I’ve never seen or heard of wholesale policing within our own ranks to compare to the third-wavers. In the past, handmaidens were mostly eager to make sure men knew they weren’t like those women; they were good little compliant girls, so they disavowed their sisters, which you can see happening in writings and biographies of important women through the ages. But now, you actually have women, of their own volition, telling other women their reality doesn’t exist, and that they have to comply with men’s version of reality or they’re bigots or transphobes or prudes or vanilla or whatever the uncool thing of the week is. And not just on the topic of trans; on porn and prostitution and BDSM, too. It’s like the worst parts of Orwell, Huxley, and Margaret Atwood patched together.

I read an article recently (written a few years back) making an excellent case for how the micro-aggression / trigger warning culture actually ends up creating more mentally delicate adults, for much the same reason that a child raised in an hypoallergenic environment will have more issues with allergies, asthma, etc. There is apparently a surge in mental illnesses among young people that can’t be fully explained by better diagnostics. Bodies and minds both need to be presented with minor challenges to help build resiliency.

If people are incapable of having a sensitive discussion without having a mental breakdown, that is not a sign of health and it’s not something we should be encouraging as normal. Having a mental breakdown should also definitely not be an “autowin” button to shut down arguments, as it’s often used.

If someone’s having a serious discussion and someone else says something that legitimately triggers PTSD or an actual anxiety attack, then sure, they should extricate themself from that conversation. But most of the time these kids are just mildly anxious or uncomfortable about being presented with sensitive topics or ideas. Students who have never been sexually assaulted are refusing to read books about rape because reading about rape makes them feel uncomfortable. Newsflash, rape should make everyone uncomfortable and that doesn’t mean you have PTSD, it just means you’re not a sociopath! Mature adults don’t just stick their heads in the sand about everything that makes them uncomfortable! If we want to end rape, we first need to acknowledge and understand it. Which occasionally means reading a book and talking about it.

This is awful and has prompted an off topic question within me: I was wondering if there’s an educational article out there that puts all the trans myths in one place (hopefully written in an unbiased manner). A bullet point list of pro-trans arguments and their factual rebuttals with references. Sort of an organized up-to-date compendium, if you will.

I know there’s a wealth of information on this blog and others but it’s all hard to parse. People who are resistant to our thinking are quick to shut down debates before they get very far and certainly won’t look through hundreds of pages of posts (though the fact that there are so many should speak volumes). I want to educate the ignorant but I’m usually not in a position to look up all the numbers and double check incidents. It can also help people from being ostracized for daring to question the trans movement; having a single link you can give someone and say, “Hey, I’ve been reading this and didn’t know about most of it, what do you think?” would break the ice without revealing where you lean.

We need to bring this information out of feminist/conservative circles. Housing it on a site that doesn’t exist for either of those things would also give it credence.

So yeah point me to it if it exists please! I will seriously consider making it if not.

The only critique of gender that exists, the only “mythbuster” originates from Feminism. Radical Feminism. Lesbian Feminism. Critique of “Transgender” absent critique of “Gender” itself (ie. Feminism) is a pointless endeavor, and is what the right wing does. I’m not interested in supporting such a project. If you do proceed, don’t forget to cite my work and research and that of the other women that you copy.

I think changing minds, even ones with which we don’t agree on everything, is the most important thing. Young people who are pro-trans instantly shut down if you’re a TERF, the same way you have shut down to my idea. Blindsiding them before they discover the root of that information could win a lot of people over. We need to unite instead of divide. It would be subterfuge, not erasure of what women have done.

It took numerous encounters with male to trans individuals before I became critical and started to research. For the “handmaidens” and folks who will never meet a trans person, education is the key to enlightenment. Helping them access that information in a sea of pro-trans results is not a pointless endeavor.

Of course all sources would be referenced fully. Thank you for everything you’ve done, you’ve invested so much of your time and energy into this and I really do appreciate it.

For me the transgender movement is an opportunity to educate the masses on the mechanism of gender itself, the ramifications of which, for women and girls, are much broader than the implications of the transgender movement. The transgender movement is a symptom of something much bigger: Gender. Yet you want to go much smaller, and target the transgender movement for what purpose exactly?

Now I don’t understand you. I never said the aim was to “debunk transgender”, just to rebuff aspects of the narrative. I am referring to things such as the false statistics and claims of non-violence so often quoted, fact checked and compiled on one page to serve as a primer for the “third wave” and well meaning to start educating themselves. Acknowledgment of peer pressure to transition, proof of detransitioners, injustices, etc. The purpose being to help spread awareness of the dangers the movement and current culture shift pose. Something for the skeptical and lazy.

We’re labeled bigots because all one sees at first is someone harmlessly wanting to play pretend; they are simply unaware of the problems. People can draw their own conclusions when they have the facts in front of them but making them listen is the hardest part. Flies with honey and all that.

You propose that stripping content of all consideration of the humanity of women and girls “lends it credence”.
I disagree.

You state that women who decline to support content which erases the interests of women and girls is “the same as” male supremacist dismissal and demonizing of women and girls.
I disagree.

You claim feminists, women, lesbians, are labeled as man-hating bigots by folks who just “aren’t aware” of the harms inflicted on women by males.
I disagree.

You claim feminists, women, lesbians, are labeled as man-hating bigots because folks just “aren’t aware” of the global harms inflicted on women by males, yet you propose censoring content that educates about these harms as the solution to this “lack of awareness”.
I disagree.

You want a one page resource which debunks- er, sorry “rebuffs aspects of the narrative” of transgender while avoiding the topic of gender itself, because shooting trannies in a barrel has broader appeal than analyzing gender which might hurt men’s feels and destabilize male supremacy.
I DISAGREE WITH YOUR STRATEGY.

But if you think feigning ignorance, erasing women, and pretending you have no point of view is the very best you can do, then…whatever.

First of all, I can’t believe that I was stupid enough to vote for Obama twice. The women’s vote put Obama in the White House twice, and this is how they thank us.

When I read this, I cried. One of my best friends who has bipolar disorder was almost raped when she was homeless and sleeping on the street. She fell asleep in the women’s restrooms at a remote park, and she awakened when a man tried to assault her. Thankfully, she took karate as a young woman, and was able to fight him off. She says she has PTSD from this attack, and other acts of violence she witnessed and experienced while being homeless. Now, she and thousands of traumatized homeless women are being told that if they feel uncomfortable having to see a man’s penis when he is undressing, or showering, they must live with the fear, anxiety, and discomfort. He wakes up in the morning with a raging erection poking through his underwear, and women are supposed to ignore it. What woman wants to share intimate sleeping quarters with a strange male? This is unbelievable, and it sickens me to the core.

During the public input period, I mailed a 32 page letter that listed research study after research study that shows that homeless women are victimized just as much, if not more, than transwomen (biological males). Homeless women have high rates of sexual assault, rape, PTSD, domestic violence, and mental illness. I also brought up the tragic incident in two different women’s homeless shelters in Toronto, Canada involving a predatory sex offender who was granted access to women’s homeless shelters. People who read this blog are familiar with Hambrook,. I also pointed out that males who cross dress or identity as transgender offend at the same rate as other males, and it’s a fact that they have been convicted of all sorts of violent crimes against women. I’m sure that they never took the time to read my letter, or other thoughtful comments from several women. They simply do not care, and I wish they would stop insulting our intelligence by pretending that they do care. I bet they didn’t even read all the comments.

For background information, click on this gendertrender link, and make sure to scroll down and read everything.

@ Gallus, “The Department of Housing and Urban Development joined other Obama agencies Tuesday in ruling that ‘Gender Identity’ determines reproductive biology and overrides Title IX sex-based protections for women and girls in homeless shelters.”

Gallus, as I understand it, Title XI deals with schools and colleges. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is different than Title IX. Both Title XI and Title VII clearly say “sex” not “gender identity”. Historically, both Title IX and Title VII meant sex as in biological sex. I don’t know why HUD brings up Title IX when it has to do with schools, and there are currently several lawsuits from conservative groups and a liberal women’s group over the Obama’s administration’s creative rewriting of “sex” under Title IX.

@Gallus, “HUD cites the Title IX re-interpretation of other Obama appointed agencies (which call for the elimination of sex as a protected category) as precedent for Tuesday’s ruling, making no mention of the current legal challenges to this very interpretation by 23 states and various private litigants.”

The latest lawsuit that I’m aware of was filed about two weeks ago by a conservative group involved a transgender boy “twerking” (suggestive dirty dancing) in the girl’s locker room. Google “twerking” and transgender. It’s rather strange that they don’t mention the current lawsuits that several states and a liberal leaning women’s group have filed. WoLF vs. US is a must read.

If a biological male supervisor of an organization that provided services to homeless people repeatedly exhibited his male genitals to female staff, or felt a compulsion to expose himself to female clients, this could be construed as sexual harassment which is considered a form of sex discrimination under Title VII. Since no documentation of any kind is required for a male to claim “gender identity”, no medical treatment is needed, and he doesn’t even have to change his ID, to me, this is a form of government sanctioned sexual harassment. How can overworked and poorly funded staff at homeless shelters know for sure what goes on in the mind of each and every strange homeless male claiming “gender identity”?

HUD states,

“Comments Opposing the Rule

Commenters opposing the rule provided many reasons for their opposition but the primary reason concerned the safety of nontransgender individuals in a shelter. Commenters stated that the rule should not open female, single-sex spaces to individuals who were born male, citing their fear that individuals could deliberately misrepresent their gender identities and compromise the privacy or safety of vulnerable women and children “ (*they fail to mention that a sexual predator has already ‘misrepresented his gender identity’ in order to prey on women in homeless shelters

Notice how they phrase this. They say, “the safety of nontransgender individuals in a shelter”, but what they really mean is females who will be sharing sleeping quarters and bathing facilities with males. The female sex is “nontransgender individuals”. Based on thousands of years of history and crime statistics, there are legitimate reasons why females are naturally suspicious of males in our private spaces.

This is the reality.

People who read this blog know about Hambrook, but new readers need to know his name, and ask themselves how a sexual predator gained entrance to two different women’s homeless shelters. .Several comments that were submitted mentioned the sexual predator Christopher, “Jessica”, Hambrook, but HUD refuses to acknowledge that males claiming transgender status have already sexually assaulted homeless women in women’s homeless shelters. One homeless woman was deaf, and suffered great emotional pain from the assaults, and another woman was fleeing domestic violence. Americans are far more litigious than Canadians. When a Hambrook incident happens (and it will) in the US, someone needs to sue HUD and the shelter owner. They can’t say they didn’t know it was a real possibility, and they can’t say women didn’t repeatedly remind them that such an incident could happen again.

This is what they say,

“It is beyond the scope of this rule to detail methods for best serving victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking. However, as discussed earlier, this final rule requires that providers must take nondiscriminatory steps that may be necessary and appropriate to address privacy concerns raised by all residents or occupants. HUD notes that both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence and other VAWA crimes
include persons who are transgender or gender nonconforming individuals and persons who
are not.”

What exactly are they saying here? It sounds like they are acknowledging in a roundabout way that homeless females can be victims of sexual assault, rape, or domestic violence, but it’s not important because a small minority of males claiming gender identity is the only thing that counts.

“It is beyond the scope of this rule to detail methods for best serving victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking.”

What they really mean is this:

(1.) They don’t care about the emotional suffering that could be experienced by women with PTSD from rape, assault, or domestic violence. If a biological male with intact male genitalia gets up in the middle of the night, and his penis is poking through his underwear, female rape victims are supposed to ignore it.
(2.) People who don’t identify as transgender are in the majority, but who cares about the majority, especially when the majority are female. There are far more homeless women with documented cases of PTSD from sexual assault, rape, or domestic violence than there are males claiming “gender identity”, but, “It is beyond the scope of this rule to detail methods for best serving victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking.”

HUD states,

“(c)(1)
Placement and accommodation. Placement and accommodation of an individual in temporary, emergency shelters and other buildings and facilities with physical limitations or
configurations that require and are permitted to have shared sleeping quarters or shared bathing facilities shall be made in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.

To clarify that placement is to be made on the basis of an individual’s self identification of gender, § 5.106(b) of this final rule includes a provision stating that individuals may not be subjected to intrusive questioning relating to their gender identity or asked to provide anatomical information, documentation, or physical or medical evidence of gender identity. (**shelters can’t ask if he has had sex reassignment surgery, or been on hormones, but it’s okay if he exposes his penis to females) Therefore, this final rule makes clear that placement in accordance with an individual’s gender identity cannot be conditioned on whether a transgender person has undergone medical treatment, has been able to change identification documents to reflect their gender identity, or has a certain appearance or gender expression.”

What they are really saying,

(1.) A biological male can still have his penis and testicles and be admitted to a women’s homeless shelter where he can share sleeping quarters and bathing facilities with females. Sex reassignment surgery is optional. Indeed, shelter staff can’t even ask if he has had surgery because this would traumatize poor transwomen. However, it’s not the least bit traumatic for homeless females with a documented history of sexual assault to wake up one morning and see a male’s erect penis in her face, or to have to share showers with a male. They could devise a confidential questionnaire that asks if he has had surgery, etc., but I suppose that would be too traumatizing for him.
(2.) He doesn’t have to currently be on hormones, or to have ever been on hormones at any time in his life.
(3.) No documentation of any kind is required that states that the “gender identity” is long standing and genuinely felt. If no documentation such a letter from a therapist, etc. is required, how can anyone know for sure that the “gender identity” is authentic? The Hambrook case where two homeless women were sexually assaulted by a sexual predator proves that males can and have gamed the system.
(4.) All his personal identification documents can say “Male”. By “personal identification documents”, I’m assuming this means driver’s license, etc. If the driver’s license says “Male”, and he says he is a “woman”, then the over worked and underpaid shelter staff has to accept him.
(5.) It does not matter if a blind person could still notice that he is male a mile away. Notice where they say, “or has a certain appearance or gender expression.”

HUD states,

“HUD is encouraged that many shelters are providing increased privacy for all residents, such as private rooms and bathrooms and showers with locks, and as discussed earlier in this preamble, HUD encourages this where feasible. This rule, however, does not mandate this configuration. Mandatory configuration of shelters is beyond the scope of this rulemaking.”

This is the reality.

They really love the phrase, “is beyond the scope of this rulemaking” which is just a rather fancy bureaucratic way of saying they don’t care what people think, and they have already made up their minds. Women in homeless shelters don’t get private rooms, and organizations that run shelters that exist on a shoestring budget don’t have the money to build private rooms and more showers. HUD wants people to know that they think it’s a good idea that some shelters are providing increased privacy, but they know that shelters are not, and cannot afford to build new facilities. As they state, “It’s beyond the scope of this rulemaking”. Notice the words “bathrooms and showers with locks”. Does this mean that HUD knows that there are bathrooms and showers in some women’s homeless shelters that don’t have locks, and they admit that males with fully intact male genitalia will have access to these unlocked showers and bathrooms? According to Obama’s HUD, it’s encouraging that some shelters are providing increased privacy and bathrooms and showers with locks, but it’s not mandatory, and “is beyond the scope of this rulemaking”.

What about sex offenders? It’s a fact that males claiming “gender identity” have sexually assaulted women, and many of them are registered sex offenders. If registered sex offenders such as Paula Witherspoon find themselves homeless, they will have access to women’s homeless shelters. Any, or all, of the males in these two must see videos could claim “gender identity”, and gain access to a women’s homeless shelter. All they have to do is self-identify. These videos are based on court records and convictions. This information is available to anyone.

Two must see videos that transgender activists don’t want people to see, but women need to see anyway. Gallus, I know these two videos have been posted on this blog before, but women need to understand that any male claiming “gender identity” will be granted access women’s homeless shelters, and he doesn’t have to undergo any medical treatment. He doesn’t even have to change his identification.

How does this relate to indecent exposure laws? Many states have indecent exposure laws, and these state laws would, for all practical purposes, be rendered meaningless. As pointed out in WOLF vs. US, this creates an absolute defense to any criminal charges under “indecent exposure”. WOLF vs. US is brilliant, and a must read.

“New Mexico criminal law makes both “Indecent exposure” (“knowingly and intentionally exposing his primary genital area to public view” (NMS 30-9-14(A)), and “Voyeurism” (“to view . . . the intimate areas of another person without the knowledge
and consent of that person . . . while the person is in the interior of a bedroom, bathroom, changing room, fitting room, dressing room or tanning booth or the interior of any other area in which the person has a reasonable expectation of privacy” (NMS 30-
9-20(A)(1)) crimes.

50. By mandating that biological males be given free and unfettered access to women’s private spaces (including the very spaces listed in the Voyeurism statute), the May 13
Guidance is final agency action that overrides New Mexico criminal law, creates an absolute defense to any criminal charges under these statutes.”

It’s a fact that males claiming “gender identity” have exposed themselves to girls and women. I know these links were posted before, but women need to realize that it’s logical to assume that males exposing themselves to women will happen again.

Someone needs to sue HUD, and when another Hambrook incident happens, and it will, HUD needs to be sued for millions. They probably released the final ruling now because they know Obama will be out of office in less than two months.

Now, she and thousands of traumatized homeless women are being told that if they feel uncomfortable having to see a man’s penis when he is undressing, or showering, they must live with the fear, anxiety, and discomfort.

Actually, it is not a man’s penis that is such a source of discomfort as much as it is the man himself. Men without penises can rape and hurt women just as well. Women who have been raped have said that it is not so much the penis which was the scary weapon as it was his fists which brutally beat her and his feet which brutally kicked.
All this emphasis on penis and how “scary” it supposedly is is awfully flattering to this little organ, which at its “hardest” couldn’t even slice butter.

“Women who have been raped have said that it is not so much the penis which was the scary weapon as it was his fists which brutally beat her and his feet which brutally kicked her”.

I understand what you are talking about. Just the physical size and strength of a male can be intimidating because women know that men are capable of inflicting great bodily harm. Women learn this at an early age.

These politically correct naïve bureaucrats who have been have spoon fed p.c. propaganda from trans sources have no idea what is going on in the real world. For some reason, they think that all transwomen (biological males) are dainty. The mean nasty women are a threat to the poor dainty transwoman. Because they are still biological male, there are large transwomen who are the size of NFL linebackers. They have the same skeletal structure and muscle development as males, and they don’t have to be on hormones. We are supposed to believe that a 5’3″ 130 lb. female is a threat to a Stefonknee Wolscht, Carlotta Sklodowska, or Patrick Hagan (aka Patty Lou Hagan) size transwoman.

“If some occupants initially present concerns about transgender or gender nonconforming occupants to project staff and managers, staff should treat those concerns as opportunities to educate and refocus the occupants. HUD recognizes that, even then, conflicts may persist and complaints may escalate to verbal or physical harassment. In these situations, providers should have policies and procedures in place to support residents and staff in addressing and resolving conflicts that escalate to harassment.”

When a Carlotta Sklodowska size transwoman is pushing his weight around in the women’s homeless shelter, it’s an “opportunity to educate and refocus the occupants.”

Who is and who isn’t more likely to be bullied and intimidated? Read the ghastly and gruesome threats that have been directed towards any woman who doesn’t fall in line with the transgender narrative. Males who make these threats will have access to women’s homeless shelters, and the HUD has the audacity to say women need to be “educated and refocused”. If he has decided that a woman is a TERF based on something she has said or read, and he threatens to bash in a TERF’s head, women need to be “refocused and educated”.

Watch the two videos that are based on convictions and court records, and ask yourself who is more likely to be seriously injured, raped, or murdered. Ignore thousands of years of history and crimes statistics that show that most violent crime is committed by males. Males who identify as transgender offend at the same rate as other males. Males who identify as “women” have murdered and raped women.

Transwomen are going to be using their large size to physically intimidate and bully women. Patrick Hagan (aka Patty Lou Hagan), all 6’2″ 180 lbs. of him, punched out a woman’s five teeth for questioning his presence in the women’s restroom. A biological male this size can inflict serious bodily injury on a female. If he ends up in a women’s homeless shelter, how will female staff at the women’s homeless shelters be able to handle him? Fortunately for the female staff and the girls, the State of Connecticut placed the violent teenage boy, “Jane Doe”, in a facility for males before he seriously injured or killed a female staff member. “Jane Doe” who was bounced around juvenile facilities because no one could control him is going to turn 18, and he will be out on the street one day. Imagine the damage that this male who “identifies as a woman” could do inside a women’s homeless shelter. If the trained female staff at juvenile facilities couldn’t handle him, what makes people think female staff in a women’s homeless shelter could handle him?

Chris Johnson and the Washington Blade have just received their orders from trans activists who now run every useless and irrelevant LGBT organization and online website. They have tossed 50% of the population under the bus. Not only are most LGBT groups, news media, etc. irrelevant to the lives of many gay men and lesbians, they are actually dangerous to the lives of the female sex. The “L” has never had any power, and the “T” controls everything. These groups are no friend of women.

I waited to comment on this post because my anger at the HUD decision would have produced only a frothing rant laced with profanity. What strikes me after thinking about it for a week and reading everyone else’s comments is that this isn’t much different than men’s behavior has always been. Consider all the men who’ve used prostitutes while protecting the “virtue” or “reputation” of the women close to them. (This is similar in many ways to their willingness to send other men’s sons to war to protect their interests, while their own spoiled pups go to college and enter lucrative professions.) Or the slaveholders who raped female slaves while treating the women in their family as delicate little flowers. Women of all classes have been mistreated under patriarchy, but their material circumstances have varied according to their position, and men of power and privilege have often used their resources to protect wives and daughters, mothers and sisters, from the sort of degradation they inflict on women from lower social classes.

HissingofSummerLawns mentioned Barack Obama’s wife and daughters and asked if he despised them. Seriously, though, how likely is it that Malia Obama will have a transwoman as roommate at Stanford? Or that Michelle Obama will ever have to share a hospital room with a transwoman? Like women from other well-off families, they can afford private rooms and aren’t likely to end up in a homeless shelter, not to mention they have the Secret Service protecting them from harm. The women closest to the president will probably never experience the worst negative consequences of his administration’s decisions. Those will fall most heavily on poor women, homeless women, abused women, imprisoned women–in other words, women who have the fewest choices and can’t afford to buy their way out of unpleasant or dangerous circumstances.

The only way of countering this insanity that I can see requires we start from a radical feminist analysis that views women as a class. On some level most men know this, which is why they try to set us against each other–rich women vs. poor, virtuous vs. fallen, sweet vs. bitchy, straight vs. lesbian, protrans vs. TERF. We need to find a way to persuade other women to reject men’s attempts to carve us into these different categories, so we can more effectively defend our rights. I’m also hoping court cases will help us push back because there’s no sound legal definition of gender identity. Gallus Mag, as usual, has pointed out the flawless logic of those who support this: “The ruling itself re-defines ‘sex’ as a component of ‘Perceived Gender Identity’ but the agency also defines ‘Gender Identity’ as a “component of sex’ in its response to public comment.”

“Women of all classes have been mistreated under patriarchy, but their material circumstances have varied according to their position, and men of power and privilege have often used their resources to protect wives and daughters, mothers and sisters, from the sort of degradation they inflict on women from lower social classes.”

Men only rape women from the lower classes and they treat their wives and daughters “like delicate little flowers”? What a vile and baseless generalization. Someone should tell that to all the women from all over the world who have been beaten and molested by their fathers and women who are raped by their husbands.

No personal disrespect intended, but what you wrote is pure political class fantasy and doubly insulting coming from someone who claims to be all about helping women, er, the women you have deemed worthy of compassion – “poor women, homeless women, abused women, imprisoned women–in other words, women who have the fewest choices and can’t afford to buy their way out of unpleasant or dangerous circumstances”.

This quote is meant to sound virtuous and show others that you are the ultimate champion of the poor and downtrodden, but it’s just really callous towards women have been the victims of molestation by family members and really any woman who doesn’t belong to your group of abused women you can virtue signal about and whom you have deemed worthy of compassion.

This is one of the most irritating aspects of the current brand of online progressivism – many feminist activists I see online spend more time deciding which women they think are politically pure enough to be worthy of compassion, than they do actually being compassionate.

Several feminist have told me recently that they don’t care at all about individual women and that feminism is purely a political ideology for women as a class. Although I get what they mean, I think that is just shitty, and that if feminism is going to focus on incidents that effect 99% of women of the world (rape and male abuse), they need to stop thinking they get to decide which victims are valid or not based on demographic categories or political affiliation. We desperately need a women’s party instead of two male dominated parties like someone else said.

To me, it’s like someone starting a political group for people killed by drunk drivers, then when someone who has lost family to drunk drivers shows up looking for support, the group says, “we are for victims of drunk driving as a class, we don’t care about individuals like you and your stupid personal issues related to drunk driving, we are promoting a whole host of unrelated political goals as well, and if you aren’t going to get on board, just fuck off and go away.”

It would be maddening and painful for the survivor to be told they have no right to be a part of the political group that represents them unless they embrace a whole bunch of other political topics that are unrelated to their issues. This happens too often today in feminist activism because it’s so wedded to the left. I feel the same way about Slutwalk – that as a survivor I should not have to support porn or legalizing prostitution to join anti-rape activism.

I was raped in a public bathroom, so I despise what Obama has done by forcing this issue everywhere and hate how prog-feminism and the media has made it all about shaming people for “irrational bathroom fear”. Goddamn right I’m scared in the bathroom after being attacked by a male stranger in one, why the fuck wouldn’t I be? Obama’s little stunt has made my PTSD 1000% worse and cost me employment because I now have to avoid/quit jobs where the “bathroom issue” will be an issue.

This has affected my life in very personal, direct and painful ways with this transgender obsession over the past four years. Even if his nanny was a tranny, his callous disregard for my safety and the safety of others disgusts me. In the story I read, his nanny detransitioned back to male later in life, so since detransition is typically taboo with trans narratives, I’m surprised they mentioned it in the article.

The umbrella can’t hold everyone under it and now the people the umbrella was made for (victims of male abuse) are being pushed out into the cold in favor of political groups that are more politically hot (trans). It’s what I see progressive feminism or libfeminism is doing to other women. It says: you don’t tick the right boxes, despite our activism being entirely about something you have experienced personally, your opinion isn’t relevant, go away.

Isn’t this attitude the same one that allowed trans to take over? That feminism isn’t for all women, but MTF trans who need to be politically centered as a class because they are the medal winners of the OO and women need to get out of the way because they aren’t as disadvantaged? It sounds like the exact same argument to me – some people are more deserving of compassion than others depending on how they can be best politically leveraged.

Rape and abuse survivors are humans that come from all walks of life, they aren’t just political toys to knock down and wind up when they are needed for a vote. Well-off women get beaten, raped and murdered by men all the time and their suffering isn’t less than because it didn’t happen to someone from a class the progressives can feel good about supporting.

Their access to money doesn’t save them and often allows their abuser to hurt them more because he has unlimited resources and wealthy male abusers almost always trap their prey, er, wives, by giving them enough money to buy useless things, but not enough to escape. Most women married to rich men marry young, do not control the finances and get trapped or blindsided and discarded with their kids when their husband decides he wants a younger wife – it’s not like they are in positions of power most of the time.

Many women in Saudi Arabia are from extremely wealthy families and live in horrendous oppression and isolation. They aren’t worthy of feminist compassion though because they have money and are privileged? It’s just not progressive to care about people unless they fall into the right social categories these days, I guess…

According to what you wrote, all women who don’t fall into the poorest category can and should just “buy their way out of it” when they are sexually assaulted or abused? Have you informed the women Cosby raped about this? Some of them are well-off former models and really should have used their money and financial privilege to purchase justice for their rapes by now. *s

Most women – rich, poor and inbetween go though absolute hell to deal with sexual assault and escape abusive men, and to claim that some are magically above because of their demographic categories it is just too much. Even the richest women are ridiculed for being raped or beaten by men and told it is their fault by society. I don’t know where people get this idea that certain women are magically protected from male sexual abuse, destitution or PTSD because have money or they are upper class or Caucasian.

I mean, yeah, I get that rich or privileged people aren’t always the most sympathetic bunch, but I’m getting a bit chaffed with the idea that they don’t face the same issues as other women and the assumption that if they are raped or beaten they can simply “buy their way out”. Have you never heard of a gilded cage?

No amount of money can undo the mental and physical damage done to women by abusive men. Many women in Hollywood and the entertainment industry have taken their own lives though out the years due to male abuse even while having all the money in the world to leave and “buy their way out”. Also, there is no “buying out” of trauma induced by years of physical and sexual assault or abuse.

Privileged women must live with the flashbacks and trauma memories induced by PTSD from male abuse, too. If you think money solves trauma, you should ask all those vets that come back from tours with money in their pockets why they don’t simply “buy their way out” of war PTSD, since they have so much money.

It’s all well and good to care about “poor women, abused women, homeless women” as abstract categories of the most deserving, but you can do it without making such baseless generalizations about all the other women who suffer domestic violence, incest and rape that don’t fall under the umbrella of those the the virtue signalers have decided deserve compassion.

These women deserve the same compassion as any other victim of DV, incest or rape – they are being abused by men and their pain is no less valid because of they tick too many privilege boxes for preening progressives to care about, for fucks sake.

Nearly all of your comment consists of knocking down straw men, criticizing statements I neither made nor implied. You clearly have not read my comment carefully or considered it in context–either the context of the post to which it was attached or of other comments I’ve made on this site, in which I’ve repeatedly criticized men/transwomen while supporting all women’s right to private spaces safe from men/transwomen–no matter how poor or wealthy those women might be. Whether it’s the locker rooms at Planet Fitness or inside a women’s prison, women need spaces free from men.

However, this particular post of Gallus Mag’s described the recent HUD ruling that effectively replaces sex with gender identity for purposes of housing people in shelters. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but the overwhelming majority of women affected by THIS RULING are going to be the poorest of the poor. My comment explicitly addressed the mindset of the MEN who make and support these sorts of decisions, who don’t care what happens to homeless women because they believe their resources will keep any woman they care about from becoming homeless. That in no way implies they won’t abuse the women in their lives, simply that they’re willing to subject some women to a risk from which they BELIEVE (whether rightly or not) they can protect any woman who might matter to them. It’s similar to the anti-choice politicians in the pre Roe vs. Wade days who sent their own pregnant daughters to countries where abortion was safe and legal. They may well have mistreated those same daughters in other ways, but they chose not to expose them to the risks of a back alley abortion that their policies made the only alternative for poorer women.

Also, on the subject of vile and baseless generalizations, let’s talk about accusing a woman from a lower class background of mere virtue signaling and ticking off boxes when she writes about the effect of a policy on other women from her background who happen to have been less fortunate. (By the grace of a college education, I lead a–somewhat precarious–middle class life these days, so I’m very aware of the advantages acquired class privilege has given me.) I also find your assumption that you could read my mind offensive. Can you point to a place where I claim upper class women are never mistreated or abused, or where I imply it’s acceptable for them to be harmed? Or where I say that material privilege constitutes absolute protection from sexual assault or trauma? If the post were about assault in general, and I had claimed only lower class women were assaulted or deserved compassion for being assaulted, your criticisms of my comment would be justified, but that’s not the context. Addressing the specific problems of poor women does not imply a hatred of middle and upper class women. You responded to my comment about the attitude of the men behind a ruling that will disproportionately affect poor and homeless women by attacking me because I supposedly compassion for non-poor women, in much the same way some white people have responded to “Black lives matter” with “All lives matter.” Not every issue is going to be about you.

And did you even read my last paragraph? “The only way of countering this insanity that I can see requires we start from a radical feminist analysis that views women as a class. On some level most men know this, which is why they try to set us against each other–rich women vs. poor, virtuous vs. fallen, sweet vs. bitchy, straight vs. lesbian, protrans vs. TERF. We need to find a way to persuade other women to reject men’s attempts to carve us into these different categories, so we can more effectively defend our rights.” Viewing women as a class, however, doesn’t mean ignoring the very real effects of other axes of privilege.

Your rant plays into men’s hands–rather than criticizing the men who harm women or who make decisions that allow other men to harm women, you chose to lash out at a woman for speaking about a particular class of women who’ll be affected by a specific policy. What made you so certain I’d never suffered any trauma or abuse when you were accusing me of the thought crime of not having compassion enough for those who have? Like too many other women, I’ve also experienced trauma, and I have compassion for you and all women who’ve been hurt, however I tend to focus on what can be done rather than getting bogged down in feelings–that might be my class background at work. It’s funny, you use the word compassion repeatedly in your comment, but only to criticize those who, in your opinion, aren’t providing as much as you’d like to all the people you believe deserve it. If you really think there isn’t enough compassion in the world, you might try adding some.

The assumption has always been that upper-class women were treated like delicate flowers, but when you read women’s history as opposed to men’s assessments of how they treated women, you see that they were often subjected to all kinds of sexual and physical abuse as well, including the threat of material deprivation if they disobeyed their husbands or fathers. Virginia Woolf, whose father was a “gentleman” (which had real meaning as a class signifier in English society then, because it meant you were part of or connected to the landed gentry) was sexually abused by two of her stepbrothers from age six to age twenty-four. Her father knew and did nothing to stop it. Freud dropped the seduction theory because he was told it was a career killer that would expose the viciousness going on in the fine homes of the great Victorian patriarchs, but for him to have formulated that theory, it meant numerous women had to come with him with tales of sexual abuse, and he believed them before he decided his career was more important. It was standard practice to relieve Victorian women’s “hysteria” by sending them to physicians to be sexually abused through the techniques of “manual stimulation.” (Though satisfying their own sexual urges through masturbation was enough to get you sent to a sanitarium.) Victorians also used to do tourism inside various sanitariums and asylums where young women were kept; they would take photographs and “mementos” from the women there in the form of pieces of their dress fabric and locks of their hair. Lots of those women were middle-class and above because they had rich fathers/husbands/brothers who could afford to commit them. Committing a woman was entirely a male prerogative, of course.

I’m not saying upper-class women have it worse than working-class or poor women, it’s just that these perceived differences are much greater in perception than in reality, and upper-class women do suffer the same abuses and brutality as poor and working-class women do. None of those upper- or middle- class women had any material possessions of their own; they were entirely reliant on the goodwill of their male relatives. (Some brilliant, important feminist, and I cannot, to my shame, remember who it was, argued that all women were actually of the same class, because it was men who actually had legal rights to the wealth and material possessions, since the law prevented women from inheriting, keeping their own pay, or having their own bank accounts.)

I guess I just want to make these points because the argument that some women have it better makes for such an effective weapon to separate women into categories of who’s “really” oppressed, when in reality all women are. I also think it’s important to totally destroy the myth of male benevolence wherever it’s found, because I don’t see how we’ll ever persuade women to invest in themselves and one another unless we do. That means destroying the myth of the harmless “Nigel” in whatever form it appears, and it seems to be embedded in discussions of upper- and middle-class women. It renders invisible the coercion, violence, humiliation, and threat of poverty in their lives.

Obama had a transgender nanny when he was growing up, which I only recently discovered. So trans is clearly not something he thinks his kids need shielding from, and his upbringing explains, at least to me, some of what’s going on. It is personal to him.

I’m not sure men actually make a distinction between “their” women and “other” women. All women are pretty much “other.” I doubt Barack Obama thinks about Michelle’s life or Malia’s or Sasha’s much; male comfort depends on thinking women have no inner reality or different experience, and I don’t believe Obama is an exception. (Which is not to say I think he’s a bad husband or father. The world is so messed up that the total indifference of one half of humanity to the suffering of the other half doesn’t necessarily make a man a bad husband or father for displaying what is a common characteristic, at least not by the standards of the day.) So maybe the Obama women will never be homeless, but if women as a whole cease to have a political existence, which is a very real threat under the new world order, they’ll share in that fate, too, and I think it will have all sorts of unimagined and unintended consequences for everyone.

I forgot to put “trigger warnings” in my far-from-comprehensive list. But you’re absolutely right. It’s kind of a coercive thing to do, now that I think about it—“Don’t offend me or you might cause me to have a mental breakdown.” It’s a pretty patriarchal way of coping, really. Deal with the personality, not the argument. Like glitterbombing Germaine Greer so they don’t have to listen to her.

And yeah, #kidsthesedays. LOL. I’m beginning to feel like one of those old people everyone groans to see coming, the kind who complains about having to walk uphill to school both ways, but lordy. There are some seriously sensitive (and manipulative?) psyches out there.

This is the craziness that happens when the class “woman” is reduced to nothing more than a linguistic category. The learned professors should be real pleased with themselves, so I don’t feel too sorry for their struggles. They enabled all this so they could get tenure.

(Sorry for the sidebar, Gallus Mag, and thanks for providing space for these discussions to happen, to say nothing of your own excellent analysis.)

I do think that with rampantly increasing income inequality, there is a tendency for the 1% to become increasingly detached from the “public realm.” In other words, policies effecting public bathrooms won’t effect women in those classes as much. You won’t go to the public bathroom at the baseball stadium as you have a private bathroom off your box. You don’t shop at Target. You don’t use the locker rooms of facilities oriented to the middle class like the Y. You have your country club, which restricts membership to “our people,” meaning there will be few if any transgender people. You obviously will have no need for a homeless shelter, and if you are raped, you will probably seek out a private therapist rather than a service. Yes, upper class women are absolutely affected by domestic violence, rape, and all kinds of issues like that. I totally agree. In fact, I have criticized a local shelter for emphasizing GED education and drug/alcohol counseling, because it implied that battered women were somehow universally uneducated or addicted, which is simply not true. But I do think that very wealthy women, insofar as their lives as insulated from having to use public facilities, are somewhat removed from the effects of transgender politics.

Yes Silverside you are absolutely right. Women with money or some power will never have to use restrooms that are that public. The ones in our building are huge, but hardly any women at all use them. Very clean, very private, very far away from ordinary life. The women who will be most harmed by male to trans are lesbians, our groups are under total targeting and policing by these guys. Box seats at basketball games in town do have their own restrooms, and are walled off from the general public. Homeless shelters prioritize women with children, excluding lesbians who don’t have children, but they are very vulnerable spaces. So if you don’t have a higher level job or aren’t in a fancy office building, or you want to use a restroom in a so-called gay friendly part of town, the trans will be right in your faces because the restrooms in many places are totally open for all men to wander in an out of.